


Let Slip the Dogs of War (The Hands of Achilles Remix)

by havocthecat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, MCU Rolling Remix, Mostly Gen, Remix, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 18:04:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7184567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havocthecat/pseuds/havocthecat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A remix of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6824215">On Reflection</a> by dsudis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Slip the Dogs of War (The Hands of Achilles Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [On Reflection](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6824215) by [Dira Sudis (dsudis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis). 



Unpredictability is the key to surviving any encounter with The Winter Soldier. War forged him into a soldier. HYDRA honed him into a weapon. 

The world looks at him as a tool to be used. A pawn to be manipulated. A terrorist to be imprisoned. Natasha has spent years fighting side-by-side with Steve Rogers, who sees him as nothing more than Bucky Barnes, the childhood friend he thought he'd lost forever. 

When Natasha looks at him, he's all of those things and none. He lives in the moment, the Winter Soldier when he sees a threat, but Bucky in his eyes when she brings up Steve. She makes a lightning-quick assessment. It's what made her so good in the Red Room and why Nick put SHIELD on the line to recruit her, not lock her in a deep, dark hole after Clint brought her in. 

James Barnes doesn't know how to be his own man. Not anymore. Natasha knows what that's like. She's rebuilt herself from the ground up at least three times. 

"Now that we've had dessert," she drawls, as he inhales the churro she's bought on a whim, "what's your plan for taking out HYDRA? You know it's, like, ninety percent destroyed already, right?"

"It's not enough." He licks the cinnamon sugar off his thumb. Revels in the taste. It's the little things that keep him human after decades of brainwashing, but he still wants revenge.

It'll never be enough. She sees a pit in him ready to be filled with vengeance and killing. One he thinks won't be filled until HYDRA is gone. Maybe it won't be. Maybe it will. Only one way to find out.

Steve will want to hear about everything. He's going to be mad if Natasha doesn't call him, but Barnes won't want her to bring Steve in until he figures out who he wants to be. She's been on this rodeo before; she just hasn't been the calm one. Clint is going to laugh his ass off at her when she tells him about this. He's going to laugh so hard.

"What's so funny?" asks Barnes.

"Just trying to imagine what Clint's going to say." It's going to involve a lot of swearing and her threatening violence if he tells Laura. He'll tell her anyway, but then they'll all laugh at it over dinner.

"Hawkeye?" asks Barnes. 

"So you have been paying attention," she says, one corner of her mouth twitching. The James Barnes pity party - no matter how understandable she found it - had been obvious the instant she caught a whiff of him. "Here I thought you spent all this time hiding out in shitholes with your head in the sand."

He wants to retort. Anger flares in his eyes, but Barnes stops himself just before he opens his mouth. She sees him rein himself in. He's as controlled as he ever was. The Winter Soldier had been built on what had already been in him, after all. 

"Clint's the guy who brought me in to SHIELD," she says, because he knows who Hawkeye is, but he doesn't know Clint or who he is to Natasha. "I was in a bad place before he found me. He made a call that SHIELD didn't like. Not at first."

Ever since she found out that HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD, she'd wondered if they'd influenced Nick's decision. If they'd thought they could turn her, either willingly or no. If she had been a pawn of theirs, it was unwittingly. 

Most of her life, she'd been a pawn. The Red Room had hollowed her out and turned her into a monster. As soon as she could conceive of another life, she ran. When she'd started working for SHIELD, it was because she thought she could be more than an assassin on the run from the Red Room. More than someone who could be bought and sold to the highest bidder, only to find out that HYDRA had been controlling her as much as she'd been following orders from SHIELD.

Natasha sometimes thought she might be a little over identified with Barnes. 

"What, he's the white knight to your black queen?" asked Barnes, with a skeptical twist to his mouth. 

"To my Black Widow, you mean," says Natasha. "Clint's a good guy. Always does the right thing."

"When he's not being brainwashed by some alien thinks he's a god, right?" asks Barnes. He almost smiles at her.

"Careful," says Natasha. "Next thing you know, you'll be cracking jokes."

"Nothing to joke about," says Barnes. "Not until I take care of some long-overdue business."

HYDRA, of course. The goal he'd been working toward during the war. It was better to have a goal than to go into business for yourself, like Natasha had done. Not with what she'd done.

"So let's hear your plan to mop up what's left of HYDRA," says Natasha. She leans back against the headboard, kicks her legs up on the bed and crosses them at the ankles. "Or were you just going to track down a bunch of HYDRA cells and shoot everyone?"

"Seemed like a good idea at the time," admits Barnes.

"Sounds complicated," says Natasha, not meaning it at all. "I think most governments take a dim view of mass murder, though, even if it's only HYDRA agents."

"I've got details," he says, his blue eyes steely. "What I don't got is a starting point."

Natasha leans forward, her smile edged like a knife. "I can get you there." 

The two of them spend hours talking strategy, planning tactics and comparing scraps of knowledge, chasing down everything they can find on HYDRA and trying to link up one cell after another. Strucker is dead at Ultron's hand, but HYDRA has another head. HYDRA always has another head. For now.

They need to whittle the whole organization down, one cell after another cut off at its neck, until they could crush HYDRA's last head under their boot heels.

She hears Barnes sneak out in the middle of the night. Doesn't try to stop him. She's given him as much help as he's willing to take, and she's had experience as the lost soul abandoning everyone in the middle of the night. He'll be back. She just has to be patient. Natasha is very good at being patient.


End file.
